30 Days with the Fuji X-Pro3: Day 8

December 15, 2020December 15, 2020 by kyle In photography Leave a comment

Throughout the last week, I’ve been writing a lot about how the Fuji X-Pro3 encourages its user to embrace imperfections and stay in the moment rather than obsessively double-checking each shot at 100% zoom. Today, I’m going to talk about the downsides of doing so…

Last week, my dad and I went on a bike ride up Rist Canyon just west of Fort Collins. It’s solid climb of ~3000 feet, and it’s ride my dad does once a year. This was the first time I was able to go with him (so good to be back in CO!), and since I’m doing this project I decided to haul my X-Pro3 up the canyon. I didn’t take many pictures, but when we got to the top I snapped this shot of our bikes while we caught our breath. High off the adrenaline of a successful climb and with the memory of some successful non-chimping/optical viewfinder photo walks from the prior days flashing through my mind, I took the photo with the optical viewfinder and didn’t check the results.

Sigh.

Autofocus fails us sometimes. And for some reason it always seems to fail the one time you don’t double-check it…

In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a big deal. But it’s quite frustrating when the gear that we’re using betrays our trust in important moments. Not only do we lose the shot, but there are downstream effects: The next time I take this camera on a ride and document a moment I want to remember, you can be sure I’ll be chimping after I take the shot. Which will take me out of the moment and go against everything I’ve been raving about the last week.

I suppose I could just stay in the moment and accept that the camera will fail from time to time, but that’s a personal conundrum. Zen and perfectionism don’t play nicely together.